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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gradders52" data-source="post: 1672569" data-attributes="member: 75771">MEANWHILE....LapwingIn 1996, the RSPB began an eight-year experiment to investigate the impact of fox and crow control on lapwings breeding on its lowland wet grassland nature reserves. On each of 11 sites, fox and crow control was undertaken for four consecutive years, and its impact compared with four years without predator control. Adult fox and territorial crow numbers were reduced by 40% and 56%, respectively, during years of predator control, but there was no change in total crow numbers as non-breeding individuals moved in when territorial birds were removed. Overall, no consistent effect of predatorcontrol on the survival of over 3,000 lapwing nests was found. However, the impact of control on nest survival varied considerably between sites (see Figure 5), and analyses showed that predator control did result in significant improvements in nest survival at sites where predator densities were high (Bolton et al. 2007).Overall, predator control had no impact on lapwing population trends across the 11 sites (Bolton et al. 2007). There are several explanations for this result. Perhaps the predators that were killed would, if present, merely have taken a similar number of lapwing eggs and chicks to those that would ultimately have died for other reasons, so foxes and crows had no impact on lapwing populations (i.e. mortality was not additive).</blockquote>